My camera is back!

I have my camera back! After an "extended vacation" in Finland, my camera made it safely across the border and back into my hands. Now I just need to start taking pictures so I can post something on here...

...which I will do soon!!

Goal for the Week:

Try to eat at least one meal a day that doesn't involve mayonnaise.

(It's harder than it sounds.)

If you want to make a Russian REALLY upset...

...bring up the results of the Mens Figure Skating competition from the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The Art of Mushroom Hunting

Well, a lot has happened since the last post but I since my internet access is still pretty limited, I haven't been able to update the blog. Or check my email. Or Facebook. Or find out who won the U.S. Open. Right now I'm writing this from a McDonalds in the center of St. Petersburg before I need to go to my Russian lesson in a few hours. I bought a small chocolate milkshake so I wouldn't feel bad about using their Wi-Fi.

I still don't have my camera--It was in fact left under my friends' couch in Finland and I'll hopefully have it back in about two weeks. I have friends going to Finland next week and so a hand-off has been arranged.

Last weekend I participated in a major Russian pastime. While Americans spend their weekends in the fall watching college football, Russian go to the forest to pick mushrooms. Yes, you read that correctly. Last Saturday morning at an insanely early hour, seven of my friends (Masha, Masha, Kostya, Sasha, Olya, Dima, and Polina, to be exact) piled into two cars and drove about an hour outside of St. Petersburg. This whole area is very densely forested and in the late-summer and autumn months there are lots of mushrooms that sprout up. The locals then INVADE the forests to wipe them clean of any edible mushroom.

Suffice it to say that I learned way more about mushrooms than I ever thought possible last Saturday. I learned how to tell between the bad ones and the good ones, what colors to be looking for, the names of all of the different varieties (none of which I would know in English), and that, like in fishing, if you're too loud then you scare the mushrooms away.

At the beginning of our hunt I'll admit that I thought it was all a bit silly, but then I found my first mushroom. I was hooked after that. After about four or five hours of scanning the forest for every possibly edible fungi, we all went back to St. Petersburg and after surviving insane drivers and absolutely ridiculous traffic jams to get back to the city, we cleaned up, chopped up, and cooked up all the mushrooms and had a feast.

I still don't really like to EAT mushrooms, but I am now a full-fledged fan of searching for mushrooms.

On another note, I now (finally) have a place to live. I am renting a room from a family I know from church in the southwest corner of the city. Right now there are six people living in the apartment representing three generations overall and tomorrow my landlady's daughter-in-law is flying in from Scotland for two months. (Her husband is getting his Ph.D. in Scotland but she is finishing up her Master's degree here in St. Pete so she comes to Russia a few months out of the year.) Seven people in one apartment MIGHT seem a bit ridiculous but because Russians are accustomed to living in cozy conditions, it works out quite well.

Either today or tomorrow I'll be buying a mini internet modem that will allow me to have internet access wherever I go with my laptop so now I'll be able to update my blog more often. And check my email. And Facebook. Now to find out who won the US Open...

"I asked you about BREAKFAST! Not YOGURT!!"

That my friends is a quote that I randomly heard on the street today from an irritated mother who was scolding her young son.

Things have been great so far in St. Pete! Yesterday I had my first Russian lesson with my private instructor and it went very well. She came into the lesson thinking that I spoke no Russian at all. Let's just say she was pleasantly surprised when she found out that wasn't the case. :) Today I went back to the same place for my first training session for my English-teaching certification. (For those people who may not be completely aware, I am here in St. Petersburg studying Russian and I will also be working as an English teacher for the same company.) The company itself seems really great--the main director is American and the other people that work there are a mix of Russians and native-English speakers from various places around the world. I was a little bit nervous about what to expect because up until I got here my only interaction with this company had been through e-mail but now I'm breathing a big sigh of relief because it seems so far to be better than I anticipated!

Other milestone events:

-I bought a cheap Nokia phone today.

-I almost have a place to live. (I'll be checking a place out on Thursday which is probably where I'll end up living.)

-The first thing I noticed walking around the city yesterday is that there are a ton of wrecked cars driving around on the streets--smashed bumpers, missing headlights, you name it. And I've witnessed several wrecks since I've been here. Good thing I usually ride the metro!

-The second thing I noticed yesterday was that there are a lot of well, um, interesting hairstyles here. Very unique. And strange. And awful.

The traditional "I lost my camera" post

In Summer 2009 I blogged about how I lost my camera in the London airport. Some of you may remember that tragedy. Well, in order to keep with tradition, it turns out that I left my camera in Finland. However, this time it wasn't on a train platform in the biggest airport in the world but instead this time I left it at my friends' apartment where I stayed Saturday night. So unlike The London Disaster, this time I will see my camera again. However, it also means that the blog is going to remain photo-less for a while longer...atleast from photos taken on my camera. Sorry.


Finland was great! I'm glad that it's so close and that I'll be able to visit there semi-regularly. Well, after December that is when my visa will allow me to be able to leave Russia. (I can't leave the country for three months. After that I'll be able to come and go as I please.)

Yesterday, Polina, Olya (my two friends from St. Pete who were in Finland this past week and whom I met up with after I arrived), and I took a mini-bus from Helsinki to St. Petersburg. Normally it's about a 5-hour drive but this time it took a little bit longer because we were stuck on the Finnish border for over an hour. (No, not because of me.) There was a Russian girl on the bus who had apparently overstayed her visa to Finland and so that's what caused the massive delay. Luckily it wasn't raining though so we just hung out outside and got to know the other passengers.

We arrived in St. Pete last night around 11:30 PM. All the palaces and bridges were lit up--It's really such an amazing sight. Even though I've been a fairly frequent resident/visitor of the city for the last 7 years I'm still always blown away every time I come here by how impressive the city looks. Imagine Dubai or Las Vegas only everything was built (very tastefully) in the 1700's and there you have St. Petersburg. (The picture above is just a photo I found online to give you an idea of what St. Pete looks like at night.) Since I had my luggage with me, our friend Shurik was nice enough to pick us up in the center of the city in his car and take me to the place where I was spending the night.

Now off to my first day of work/school/life in my new city!

Fun in FINLAND!

I will post pictures soon but just wanted to let you know that I arrived in Finland safely yesterday afternoon and have been having a great time so far. I'll be here for one more night--tomorrow afternoon I'm taking a bus to St. Petersburg. It should "only" be about a 5 hour ride.

I would try to write more right now but it seems that jetlag has made me completely incapable of remembering both my native language and where the keys on the keyboard are so I'll spare you the pain of making you read my rambling.